CHAPTER 2

Early after noon, Buck sat at his computer in the vastly enlarged shelter beneath the safe house. He and his father-in-law and Dr. Charles had done the bulk of the excavating work. It wasn’t that Dr. Ben-Judah had been unwilling or unable. He had proved remarkably fit for a man with his nose in scholarly works and his eyes on a computer screen the majority of every day.

But Buck and the others encouraged him to stay at his more important work via the Internet—teaching the masses of new believers and pleading for converts. It was clear Tsion felt he was slacking by letting the other men do the manual labor while he toiled at what he called soft work in an upstairs bedroom. For days all he had wanted to do was join the others in digging, sacking, and carrying the dirt from the cellar to the nearby fields. The others had told him they were fine without his help, that it was too crowded with four men in the cramped space, that his ministry was too crucial to be postponed by grunt work.

Finally, Buck recalled with a smile, Rayford had told Tsion, “You’re the elder, our pastor, our mentor, our scholar, but I have seniority and authority as ersatz head of this band, and I’m pulling rank.”

Tsion had straightened in the dank underground and leaned back, mock fear on his face. “Yes, sir,” he said. “And my assignment?”

“To stay out of our way, old man. You have the soft hands of the educated. Of course, so do we, but you’re in the way.”

Tsion had dragged a sleeve across his forehead. “Oh, Rayford, stop teasing me. I just want to help.”

Buck and Doc stopped their work and joined, in essence, in ganging up on Tsion. “Dr. Ben-Judah,” Floyd Charles said, “we all really do feel you’re wasting your time—we’re wasting your time—by letting you do this. Please, for our sakes, clear our consciences and let us finish without you.”

It was Rayford’s turn to feign offense. “So much for my authority,” he said. “I just gave an order, and now Sawbones pleads with him yet again!”

“You gentlemen are serious,” Tsion said, his Israeli accent thick as ever.

Rayford raised both hands. “Finally! The scholar gets it.”

Tsion trundled back upstairs, grumbling that it “still does not make any sense,” but he had not again tried to insert himself into the excavation team.

Buck was impressed with how the other three had melded. Rayford was the most technologically astute, Buck himself sometimes too analytical, and Floyd—despite his medical degree—seemingly content to do what he was told. Buck teased him about that, telling him he thought doctors assumed they knew everything. Floyd was not combative, but neither did Buck find him amused. In fact, Floyd seemed to run out of gas earlier every day, but he never slacked. He just spent a lot of time catching his breath, running his hands through his hair, and rubbing his eyes.

Rayford mapped out each day’s work with a rough sketch amalgamated from two sources. The first came from the meticulously hen-scratched spiral notebooks of the original owner of the place, Donny Moore, who had been crushed to death at the church during the great wrath of the Lamb earthquake nearly eighteen months before. Buck and Tsion had discovered Donny’s wife’s body in the demolished breakfast nook at the back of the house.

Donny had apparently planned for just such a future, somehow assuming that one day he and his wife would have to live in seclusion. Whether he feared nuclear fallout or just hiding from Global Community forces, he had crafted an expansive plan. His layout enlarged the tiny, dank cellar at the back of the house to extend beneath the entire other side of the duplex and far out into the yard.

The other source Rayford had consulted was the late Ken Ritz’s refinement of the original plan. Ken had honed his image as a clod-kicking blue-collar bush pilot. It turned out he was a graduate of the London School of Economics, licensed in all manner of high-speed jets, and—as these schematics showed—a self-taught architect. Ken had streamlined the excavation process, moved Donny’s support beams, and devised a central communications protocol. When all was in place, the shelter should be undetectable and the various satellite linkups, cellular receivers and transmitters, and infrared computer interfaces easy to access and service.

While Buck worked with Doc and Rayford, and Tsion wrote his masterful daily missives to his global audience, Chloe and Hattie busied themselves with their own pursuits. Hattie seemed to work out every spare moment, madly building tone and endurance and adding weight to what had become her emaciated frame. Buck worried she was up to something. She usually was. No one in the house was certain she hadn’t already compromised their location with her ill-conceived effort to buy her way to Europe months before. So far no one had come nosing around the place, but how long could that last?

Chloe spent the bulk of her time with baby Kenny, of course. When she wasn’t sneaking in a nap to try to regain her own strength, she used her free moments to work via the Net with her growing legion of Commodity Co-op suppliers and distributors. Already believers were beginning to buy and sell to and from each other, in anticipation of the dark day when they would be banished from normal trade.

The pressure of close quarters and lots of work, not to mention dread of the future, was Buck’s constant companion. He was grateful he could do his own writing and help Rayford and Doc with the shelter while still getting time with Chloe and Kenny. But somehow his days were as long as ever. The only time he and Chloe had to themselves was at the end of the day when they were barely awake enough to talk. Kenny slept in their room, and while he was not the type to bother the rest of the household, both Buck and Chloe were often up with him in the night.

Buck lay awake one midnight, pleased to hear Chloe’s deep rhythmic breathing and know she was asleep. He was mulling how to improve the efficiency of the Trib Force, hoping he could contribute as much as the other men seemed to. From the beginning, when the Force consisted of just the late Bruce Barnes, Rayford, Chloe, and him, Buck felt he had become part of a pivotal, cosmic effort. Among the earliest believers following the Rapture, the Tribulation Force was committed to winning people to Christ, opposing Antichrist, and surviving until the reappearing of Christ, now just over three and a half years away.

Tsion, whom God had provided to replace Bruce, was a priceless commodity who needed to be protected above all. His knowledge and passion, along with his ability to communicate on a layman’s level, made him Nicolae Carpathia’s number one enemy. At least number one after the two witnesses at the Wailing Wall, who continued to torment unbelievers with plagues and judgments.

Chloe astounded him with her ability to run an international company while taking care of a new baby. Doc was clearly a gift from God, having saved Hattie’s life and keeping the rest of them healthy. Hattie was the only unbeliever and understandably selfish. She spent most of her time on herself.

But Buck worried most about Rayford. His father-in-law had not been himself lately. He seemed to seethe, short-tempered with Hattie and often lost in thought, his face clouded with despair. Rayford also had begun taking breaks from the house, walking nowhere in the middle of the day. Buck knew Rayford would not be careless, but he wished someone could help. He asked Tsion to probe, but the rabbi said, “Captain Steele eventually comes to me when he wants to reveal something. I do not feel free to pursue private matters with him.”

Buck had asked Doc’s opinion. “He’s my mentor, not the other way around,” Floyd said. “I go to him with my problems; I don’t expect him to come to me with his.”

Chloe begged off too. “Buck, Daddy is a traditional, almost old-world father. He’ll give me all the unsolicited advice he wishes, but I wouldn’t dream of trying to get him to open up to me.”

“But you see it, don’t you?”

“Of course. But what do you expect? We’re all crazy by now. Is this any way to live? Going nowhere in daylight except to Palwaukee once in a while, having to use aliases and worry constantly about being found out?”

Buck’s compatriots all had reasons for not confronting Rayford. Buck would have to do it. Oh, joy, he thought.

David Hassid sat in the passenger seat of GC Chopper One, watching with Mac McCullum. The ground crew at New Babylon Airport hooked a thick steel cable from the helicopter to three bundled skids containing 144 computers. The crew chief signaled Mac to begin a slow ascent until the cable was taut. Then he gently lifted off, ostensibly to deliver the cargo to the Global Community palace.

Mac said, “The skids should take care of themselves, provided you keep away from that release lever. You wouldn’t really do that, would you?”

“To delay my own staff from finding Tsion’s and Buck’s and Chloe’s transmission point? You bet I would, if it was the only way.”

“If?”

“C’mon, Mac. You know me better than that by now. You think I would trash that many computers? I may be only about a third your age—”

“Hey!”

“All right, a little less than half, but give me some credit. You think the number of computers we ordered was lost on me?”

Mac held up a finger and depressed his radio transmitter. “GC Chopper One to palace tower, over.”

“This is tower, One, go.”

“ETA three minutes, over.”

“Roger, out.”

Mac turned to David. “I figured that’s why you ordered a gross. One for every thousand witnesses.”

“Not that it’ll parcel out that way, but no, I’m not going to crash them in the desert.”

“But I’m not putting down at the palace either, am I?”

David smiled and shook his head. From their position he had a view of the sprawling palace complex. Acres and acres of buildings surrounded the great gleaming castle—what else could he call it—Carpathia had erected in honor of himself. Every imaginable convenience was included, thousands of employees dedicated to every Carpathia whim.

David dug his secure phone from his pocket and punched a speed number. “Corporal A. Christopher,” he said. “Director Hassid calling.” He covered the phone and told Mac, “Your new cargo chief for the Condor.”

“Do I know him?”

David shrugged and shook his head. “Yes, Corporal Christopher. Is the Condor hold accessible? . . . Excellent. Be ready for us. . . . Well, I can’t help that, Corporal. You may feel free to speak with Personnel, but my understanding is that you have no say in that.”

David held the phone away from his face and turned it off. “Hung up on me,” he said.

“Nobody likes the cargo job for the two-one-six,” Mac said. “Not enough work. You trust this guy?”

“No choice,” David said.

Buck had temporarily moved his computer to the kitchen table and was rapping out a story for The Truth when Rayford returned from his morning walk. “Hey,” Buck said. Rayford only nodded and stood at the top of the stairs to the cellar.

Buck’s resolve nearly left him. “What’s the plan today, Ray?”

“Same as always,” Rayford muttered. “We’ve got to start getting walls up down here. And then we’ve got to make the shelter invisible. No apparent access. Where’s Doc?”

“Haven’t seen him. Hattie’s in the—”

“Other side, of course. Training for a marathon, no doubt. She’s going to wind up getting us all killed.”

“Hey, Dad,” Buck tried, “way to look on the bright side.”

Rayford ignored him. “Where’s everybody else?” he said.

“Tsion’s upstairs. Chloe’s on her computer in the living room. Kenny’s napping. I told you where Hattie is; only Floyd is AWOL. He might be downstairs, but I didn’t notice him go down.”

“Don’t say he’s AWOL, Buck. That’s not funny.”

It was unusual for Rayford to chastise him, and Buck hardly knew how to respond. “I just mean he’s unaccounted for, Ray. Truth is, he hasn’t looked well lately and looked awful yesterday. Wonder if he’s sleeping in.”

“Till noon? What was the matter with him?”

“I saw a little yellow in his eyes.”

“I didn’t.”

“It’s dark down there.”

“Then how’d you see it?”

“Noticed last night, that’s all. I even said something to him about it.”

“What’d he say?”

“Some joke about how crackers always think the brothers look strange. I didn’t pursue it.”

“He’s the doctor,” Rayford said. “Let him worry about himself.” That, Buck decided, was a perfect opening. He could tell Rayford that he didn’t sound like his usual compassionate self. But the moment passed when Rayford took the offensive. “What’s your schedule today, Buck? Magazine or shelter work?”

“You’re the boss, Ray. You tell me.”

“I could use you downstairs, but suit yourself.”

Buck rose.

Mac delicately lowered the skids onto the pavement at the east side of the hangar that housed the Condor 216. The hangar door was open, the cavernous cargo hold of the Condor also agape. David jumped out before the blades stopped whirring and hurried to unhook the cable from the cargo. Out from the hangar sped a forklift that quickly engaged the first load, smoothly tilted it back against the truck, then spun in a circle and shot back into the hangar. By the time Mac joined David and they shut the hangar door, the forklift operator had shut the Condor cargo hold and was replacing the forklift in a corner.

“Corporal Christopher!” David shouted, and the corporal whirled to face him from a hundred feet away. “Your office, now!”

“Doesn’t look too pleased,” Mac said as they walked to the glassed-in office within the hangar. “No salute, no response. Negative body language. Gonna be a problem?”

“The corporal is my subordinate. I hold all the cards.”

“Just the same, David, you have to give respect to get respect. And we can trust no one. You don’t want one of your key people—”

“Trust me, Mac. It’s under control.”

The name on the office door next to Mac’s had just been repainted: “CCCCC.”

“What is that?” Mac said.

“Corporal Christopher, Condor Cargo Chief.”

“Please!” Mac said.

David motioned Mac to follow him into the corporal’s office, shut the door, and sat behind the desk, pointing to a chair for Mac. The older man seemed to sit reluctantly.

“What?” David said.

“This is how you treat a subordinate?”

David put his feet on the desk and nodded. “Especially a new one. Got to establish who’s boss.”

“I was taught that if you have to use the word boss with an employee, you’ve already lost ’em.”

David shrugged. “Dark ages,” he said. “Desperate times, desperate measures . . .”

Footsteps stopped outside the door, and the knob turned. David called out, “Surely you’ll knock before walking in on your boss and your pilot, won’t you, Corporal?”

The door stopped, open an inch.

“Shut the door and knock, Corporal!” David hollered, his hands behind his head, feet still on the desk.

The door shut, a little too loudly. Then a long pause. Finally, three deliberate and loud raps on the door. Mac shook his head. “This guy even knocks sarcastically,” he whispered. “But you deserve it.”

“Enter,” David said.

Mac’s chair scraped as he bolted upright in the presence of a young woman in fatigues. Under her cap showed short cropped black hair, cut almost like a man’s, but she was trim and comely with large dark eyes, perfect teeth, and flawless skin.

Mac whipped off his cap. “Ma’am.”

“Spare me, Captain,” she said, then turned her scowl on David. “I’m required to knock to enter my own office?”

David had not moved. “Sit down, Mac,” he said.

“When the lady sits down,” Mac said.

“I’m not giving her permission to sit,” David said, and Corporal Christopher waved Mac to his seat. “Captain Mac McCullum, this is Corporal Annie Christopher. Annie, Mac.”

Mac started to rise again, but Annie stepped and shook his hand. “No need, Captain. I know who you are, and your Neanderthal chauvinism is noted. If we’re going to work together, you can quit treating me like a little woman.”

Mac looked at her and then at David. “Maybe you treat her with the respect she deserves,” he said.

David cocked his head. “Like you said, Mac. You never know whom you can trust. As for this being your office, Corporal, everything of yours is mine as long as you’re under my command. This space has been parceled to you to facilitate your doing what I tell you. Understood?”

“Clearly.”

“And, Corporal, I’m not even military, but I know it’s a breach of protocol to keep your head covered in the presence of your superior.”

Annie Christopher sighed and let her shoulders slump as she whipped off her cap. She ran a hand through her short hair and moved to the window between the office and the rest of the hangar. She closed the blinds.

“What are you doing?” David said. “There’s no one out there, and I didn’t give you permission to—”

“Oh, come now, Director Hassid. Do I need your permission for everything?”

David lifted his feet off the desk and sat upright as Annie approached. “As a matter of fact, you do.”

He opened his arms and she sat on his lap. “How are you, sweetheart?” she said.

“I’m good, hon, but I think Mac’s about to have a heart attack.”

Mac slid to the edge of his chair and leaned forward, elbows on knees. “You’re both brats,” he said. “Forgive me, Miss Christopher, if I check your mark.”

“Be my guest,” she said, leaning across the desk so he could reach her. “You can bet that’s what David and I did the day we met.”

Mac cradled the back of her head in his palm and ran his other thumb across the mark on her forehead. He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her gently atop the head. “You’re young enough to be my daughter,” he said, “sister.”

Annie moved to another chair. “And for the record, Captain McCullum, I can’t stand working for either of you. Personnel has a standing request from me, demanding that I be reassigned. The director of my department is condescending and unbearable, and the captain of the Condor is unbearably sexist.”

“But,” David said, “I have informed Personnel that she is not to be catered to. Annie has caused trouble in every department she’s served, and it’s payback time for her. They love it.”

Mac squinted at her, then at David. “I can’t wait to hear your stories,” he said.

Buck postponed his heart-to-heart with his father-in-law when Rayford spread the plans under a light in the basement and asked his advice on how to make the entrance impossible to detect.

“Thought you’d never ask,” Buck said. “Actually, I have been noodling this.”

“I’m all ears.”

“You know the freezer in the other duplex?”

“The smelly one.”

Buck nodded. They had discarded the spoiled food, but the stench inside remained. “Move that over here, stock it with what looks like spoiled food but only smells that way because of the residue, and hinge the food trays at the back. Anyone who looks in there will be repelled by the smell and won’t look close at what they assume is spoiled food. They’ll never think to lift the food trays, but if they do, they’ll find a false bottom that opens to the stairs to the shelter. Meanwhile, we put a wall over the current basement door.”

Rayford cocked his head, as if searching his mind for a flaw. He shrugged. “I like it. Now if there was a way to keep it from Hattie.”

Buck looked around. “So I was right? Floyd’s not down here?”

“Mr. McCullum, there’s a message here for you to call Mr. Fortunato,” Annie said.

“Terrific. May I use your phone, Corporal?”

Annie said, “It’s not my phone, sir. It’s merely been parceled out to me. . . .”

He phoned Fortunato’s office. “Mac McCullum returning his call. . . . Yes, ma’am. . . . Friday? . . . How many guests? . . . No, ma’am. You may tell him there was some sort of a snafu about that shipment. He’ll have to talk with the purchasing director, but no, those were not available to be delivered to the palace. . . . Perhaps when we return from Botswana, yes, ma’am.”

Dr. Floyd Charles’s bedroom door was shut. Buck saw Tsion at his computer in the next room, forehead in his hand, elbow on the desk. “You OK, Tsion?”

“Cameron! Come in, please. Just resting my eyes.”

“Praying?”

The rabbi smiled wearily. “Without ceasing. We have no choice, have we? How are you, my friend? Still worried about your father-in-law?”

“Yeah, but I’ll talk to him. I was wondering if you’d seen Doc today?”

“We usually share an early breakfast, as you know. But I was alone this morning. I did not hear him in the basement, and I confess I have not thought about it since. I have been writing. Cameron, we have no idea how long this lull may last between the fifth and sixth woes. I am trying to decide myself whether what John saw in his vision is real or symbolic. As you know—”

“Dr. Ben-Judah, forgive me. I want to hear this—”

“Yes, of course. You should check in on Floyd. We will talk later.”

“I don’t mean to be rude.”

“You need not apologize, Cameron. Now go. We will talk later. Call if you need me.”

Buck had never grown used to the privilege of living in the same house as the man whose daily words were like breath to millions around the world. Though Tsion was usually within a few dozen steps, when he was too busy or too tired to talk, the others in the household downloaded and saved his messages from the web. The best part about living with him was that he was as excited about the messages as were his audiences. He labored over them all morning and most of the afternoon in preparation for transmitting no later than early evening. All over the world sympathetic translators converted his words into the languages of their people. Other computer-literate believers invested hours every day in cataloguing Dr. Ben-Judah’s information and making it easily accessible to newcomers.

When Tsion came across some startling revelation in his study, Buck often heard him exult and knew he would soon pad out to the top of the stairs. “Listen to this,” he would call out, “anyone who can hear me!” His knowledge of the biblical languages made his commentary the absolute latest thought on a given passage by the world’s most astute Bible scholar.

Buck couldn’t wait to hear what Tsion was wrestling with about the prophesied sixth woe. But for now he worried about Doc. He tapped lightly on his bedroom door. Then louder. He turned the knob and entered. It was the middle of the afternoon, the spring sun high in the sky. But the room was dark, the shades pulled. And Doc Charles was still in bed. Very still.

“Goin’ to Africa Friday,” Mac said. “Fortunato’s agreed to a face-to-face request by Mwangati Ngumo. ’Course Ngumo thinks he’s meeting with Nicolae. Bet Mwangati’s wonderin’ when Carpathia’s gonna make good on his promises.”

Annie Christopher snorted. “Imagine what the potentate must have promised him to get him to give up the secretary-generalship.”

“We’ll know Friday,” Mac said. “At least I will.”

Annie looked at Mac. “They let you sit in on these meetings?” she said.

Mac glanced at David. “You haven’t told her?”

“Feel free,” David said.

“Come with me, Corporal,” Mac said.

She and David followed him out. “I’ll keep calling you Captain or Mr. McCullum, even in private,” Annie said. “I let you check my mark and kiss me on the head. But the most formal thing you’re allowed to call me from now on is Sister.”

“I don’t know,” Mac said. “I’d better keep it formal, just so I don’t slip up in front of somebody.” She followed him into the cockpit.

“Doc?” Buck said, approaching the bed. He detected no movement. He didn’t want to scare him.

Assuming the light would be less blinding than sunshine, Buck flipped it on. He sighed. At least Floyd was breathing. Perhaps he had merely had trouble falling asleep and was catching up. Floyd groaned and turned.

“You all right, Doc?” Buck tried.

Floyd sat up, his face a mask of puzzlement. “I was afraid of this,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Buck said. “I just—”

Floyd whipped off the blankets. He sat on the edge of the bed in a long terry cloth robe that fell open to reveal him fully clothed in flannel shirt, jeans, and boots. He had sweat through it all.

“Was it that cold last night?” Buck said.

“Open those drapes, would ya?”

Floyd covered his eyes as the light burst into the room.

“What’s the matter, Floyd?”

“Your vehicle in running order?”

“Sure.”

“Get me to Young Memorial. My eyes still yellow?”

He squinted at Buck, who bent to look.

“Oh, Floyd,” Buck said. “I wish they were.”

“Bloodshot?”

“That’s an understatement.”

“No white showing?”

Buck shook his head.

“I’m in trouble, Buck.”